[For the United States, the chaos now engulfing Iraq risks re-entangling the American military in a conflict that the Obama administration spent its first term winding down. President Obama, in a televised statement on Friday, said that Mr. Maliki’s government clearly needed more help and that the United States was weighing a range of options. But Mr. Obama said that he would not send troops back and that American military aid alone was not a solution.]
By Alissa J. Rubin, Suadad
Al-Salhy and Rick Gladstone
 |
Shiite volunteers during a tribal meeting in northern
Baghdad.
Credit Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times
|
The call to arms
by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, was the most urgent sign yet of the growing desperation
of the country’s Shiite majority in the face of a resurgent Sunni militant
movement drawn from the insurgency in neighboring Syria and vestiges of the
Saddam Hussein loyalists toppled from power by the American-led invasion a
decade ago.
Ayatollah
Sistani’s plea came as both the United States and Iran, adversaries on a range
of issues including the Syria conflict, were both seeking ways to help the
government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and avoid a collapse in Iraq
that would further destabilize the Middle East.
At the same time,
the ayatollah’s plea also risked plunging Iraq further into the pattern of
sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites that convulsed the country
during the height of the American occupation.
For the United
States, the chaos now engulfing Iraq risks re-entangling the American military
in a conflict that the Obama administration spent its first term winding down.
President Obama, in a televised statement on Friday, said that Mr. Maliki’s
government clearly needed more help and that the United States was weighing a
range of options. But Mr. Obama said that he would not send troops back and
that American military aid alone was not a solution.
“The United
States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the
absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that
they’re prepared to work together,” he said. “We’re not going to allow
ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there,
we’re keeping a lid on things” while the political leaders fail to address the
underlying fissures dividing Iraqi society.
While it was
unclear from Mr. Obama’s remarks what he might be prepared to do militarily to
help the Maliki government, administration officials said the options included
airstrikes by manned aircraft or drones, improved intelligence sharing and
deploying small numbers of Special Forces.
The United States
already has considerable military power deployed in the region, with 35,000
troops, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Gulf states. In addition, the
United States has an array of ships there, as well as the aircraft carrier
U.S.S. George H. W. Bush with an accompanying Navy cruiser in the northern
Arabian Sea. Two Navy destroyers from the Bush strike group have moved into the
Persian Gulf, a Defense Department official said.
For Iran’s Shiite
leaders, the Iraq crisis represents a direct Sunni militant threat on their
doorstep. The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Gen. Qassem
Suleimani, arrived in Baghdad on Thursday and has been reviewing how Iraq’s
Shiite militias are prepared to defend Baghdad and other areas, according to
a report on
Iranwire, a website run by expatriate Iranian journalists.
“The mobilization
of the Shia militias, and Qassem Suleimani’s presence, is a very good
indication of how seriously they’re taking this,” Hayder al-Khoei, an associate
fellow at the London-based Chatham House research group, said in an interview
with Iranwire from Baghdad.
Even with their
shared interests in a stable Iraq, there was no overt sign of cooperation or
communication between Washington and Tehran on the crisis. Marie Harf, a State
Department spokeswoman, told reporters on Friday that “we are not talking to
the Iranians about Iraq.”
Thousands of
Iraqi Shiites responded to the call by Ayatollah Sistani, 83, a respected
figure among Iraq’s rival sects, whose statements carry particular weight among
the Shiite majority. The statement, read by his representative during Friday
prayers, said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold
a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”
The
representative of Ayatollah Sistani, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, spoke in
Karbala, regarded by Shiites as one of Iraq’s holiest cities. The sheikh said
volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces,” but cautioned that
they should not do any more than that.
The statement
stopped short of calling for a general armed response to the incursion led by
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni extremist group that has emerged
as one of the most potent opposition forces in the Syrian civil war and that
now controls large areas of both Syria and northern Iraq.
The sheikh
emphasized that all Iraqis should join the fight, pulling together, so the
country does not slide into all-out sectarian warfare. But in a time of
mounting frictions and deepening distrust between the sects, it appeared
unlikely that many Sunnis would answer the ayatollah’s call. Many Sunnis feel
little sympathy either for the government or for the extremists of ISIS.
Volunteers began
to appear at the southern gate to Baghdad, which leads to the predominantly
Shiite south of the country, within an hour after Mr. Karbalaie broadcast
Ayatollah Sistani’s call.
At the police
post there, by the soaring arches that mark the city limits, a pickup truck
driven by elders pulled up with six young men in the back.
“We heard Ali
Sistani’s call for jihad, so we’re coming here to fight the terrorism
everywhere, not just in Iraq,” said Ali Mohsin Alwan al-Amiri, one of the
elders.
The Sunni
insurgents continued their offensive on Friday, fanning out to the east of the
Tigris River, and at least temporarily seized two towns near the Iranian
border, Sadiyah and Jalawla. Security officials in Baghdad said government
troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and
forced the insurgents to withdraw, a rare success.
The Kurds control
a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq and have long sought independence. As
the militants advanced on Thursday, their forces took full control of Kirkuk,
an oil center that had been contested by the Kurds and the country’s Arab
leaders for years, after the Iraqi Army abandoned its posts there.
The apparent
disintegration of some units of the American-armed Iraqi Army and the loss of
control of Kirkuk and the Sunni areas overrun by the militants represented the
worst security crisis in Iraq since the American withdrawal in 2011,
threatening the country’s future as a cohesive state.
Both the United
States and Iran have watched events with alarm and have issued warnings of
possible intervention.
In its language
and tone, Ayatollah Sistani’s statement portrayed it as a religious and
patriotic act to volunteer either for the Iraqi Army or for a Shiite militia,
two forces that are becoming difficult to distinguish.
When the
ayatollah’s representative, Mr. Karbalaie, said, “Whoever can hold a weapon has
to volunteer to join the security forces,” the call was greeted with cheers and
shouts of “It will be done!”
People in
Ayatollah Sistani’s office said the statement was a response to one issued by
the leadership of ISIS threatening to seize not just the predominantly Sunni
areas of northern Iraq, but also Baghdad and the cities of Karbala and Najaf,
which are sacred to Shiite Muslims.
“Iraq and the
Iraqi people are facing great danger,” Mr. Karbalaie said. “The terrorists are
not aiming to control just several provinces. They said clearly they are
targeting all other provinces including Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf. So the
responsibility to face them and fight them is the responsibility of all, not
one sect or one party. The responsibility now is saving Iraq, saving our
country, saving the holy places of Iraq.”
Since the
insurgents captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, senior officers in the
army have been meeting with local committees and Shiite militias in Baghdad and
asking them to round up volunteers to bolster the government forces. Maj. Gen.
Abdul Jabbar, commander of the 11th Division, went to a stadium in the
Hussainiya neighborhood to speak to a gathering of local sheikhs, and called on
each of them to produce 50 volunteers.
On the main axis
of the insurgent advance, the highway running south from Mosul to the capital,
there were no indications on Friday that the militants had succeeded in taking
Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, which is home to a Shiite shrine and is
defended by Shiite militias. “We hope that all the Shiite groups will come
together and move as one man to protect Baghdad and the other Shiite areas,”
said Abu Mujahid, one of the militia leaders.
Iran’s state-run
news media reported this week that Tehran had strengthened its forces along the
Iraq border and suspended all pilgrim visas into Iraq, but had received no request
from Iraq for military help. Reports that Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops
had crossed the border into Iraq to assist the government forces could not be
confirmed; Shiite militia leaders in the capital said they knew of no such move
and had not asked Iran to send troops.
The insurgents
have pledged to march on Baghdad, but seizing and controlling the sprawling
Iraqi capital, with its large population of Shiites, is likely to prove much
more difficult than advancing across a Sunni heartland with little sympathy for
the central government.
For its part, the
administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has seemed bewildered by
the crisis. It was unable to muster a quorum in Parliament this week to approve
a state of emergency.
On Friday, however,
an spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, was quoted by
Agence France-Presse as saying, “We put in place a new plan to protect
Baghdad.”
Alissa J. Rubin and Suadad al-Salhy reported from Baghdad,
and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from
London, Rod Nordland from Baghdad,Tim Arango from Erbil, Iraq, and Michael R.
Gordon, Helene Cooper and Peter Baker from Washington.
